Cilician Gates

• The Cilician Gates Pass, also known as the Gulek Pass, is located on the Motorway 21 O-21 between Tarsus and Ankara in Turkey.

Description

• The Road runs from Tarsus in Cilicia through this Pass in the Taurus Mountains into Cappadocia.
• The Pass is 60 feet (20m) wide and several hundred metres deep.

History

• The Pass has been used by Mule trains since Antiquity.
• In Antiquity, the nearby city of Tyana controlled the access to this Pass.
• In 333 BCE, Alexander the Great passed through here with his Army heading to the East.
• In 1918, the Germans completed a narrow gauge railway using this Pass, to connect Turkish troops from Istanbul with the Front in the Levant. It was part of the projected Baghdad Railway which wasn’t completed until 1940.

The Persian Royal Road

• The Cilician Gates was one of four main Fortified Passes controlling access into Asia Minor. All Passes were on the Persian Royal Road. The Passes were:
  • The Cilician Gates
  • ‘Pass of Beilan’ (Pylae Syriae-Gates of Syria)
    • The Main Pass between Cilicia into Syria.
  • Another ‘Syrian Gates’ Pass a few miles north of Alexandria.
  • ‘Baghche Pass’
    • The Amanian Gate into Northern Syria and the Euphrates.

Cilician Gates (Gulek Pass)